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Thursday, May 15, 2014

#1039: Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a fundie rightwing radio host,
pseudo-intellectual,
and regular contributor to Townhall,
where he tries to argue that the United States is a Christian nation and that liberals are bad. As opposed to some radio hosts Prager seems to know
something about history and religion, but mixes it readily with bizarre
untruths, Jonanism,
nonsense,
and psychological projection, for instance with regard to his claim that ‘the
Left’ allows their ‘feelings’ to get in the way of policy; Prager himself would
of course never do that. A fine example of Prager’s general acumen is displayed
in this rant, where he argues that The Left is hateful. Why? Because they call
right-wingers … hateful, and rightwingers don’t call leftists hateful. That’s
the premise, and Prager is evidently unaware of the dialectical position he has
put himself in. Hilarity ensues.

Prager’s nebulous
enemy

It is sometimes a bit unclear who the Left is (Prager has
for instance accused Ron Paul for being a “radical lefty”), but apparently “you cannot understand the left if you do not understand that Leftism is a
religion. It is not God-based (some left-wing Christians’ and Jews’ claims
notwithstanding), but otherwise it has every characteristic of a religion. The
most blatant of those characteristics is dogma. People who believe in Leftism
have as many dogmas as the most fundamentalist Christian,” but that doesn’t
really help. Apparently Barack Obama is America’s first leftist president
(possibly except FDR).

In short, by the rules of Jonanism, The Left is a
generalization of strawman characterizations of mostly everyone who disagrees
with Prager, and his criticisms are backed up by some serious spotlighting (though in Prager’s mind it is of course liberals who are overgeneralizing when
talking about conservatives). He is of course no stranger to lying: In 2011 he
predicted that during Obama’s State of the Union address the Under God motto in
Congress would not be shown based on how it hadn’t been seen in recent years due to godless cameramen.

Prager University

As for the education part, Prager has attempted to remedy
the lamentable current situation by founding his own “Prager University”.
It’s benchmark achievement is apparently convincing Gil Dodgen to become a creationist (though some seem to suspect that Dodgen was really a creationist from the
start). The fundamental principle behind the “university” is that “ever since I
attended college, I have been convinced that either ‘studies’ confirm what
common sense suggests or that they are mistaken,” which is not a particularly fruitful approach to
science,
and the university engages in some interesting marketing tactics (the name of R.J. Moeller, Dean of Students at the “university” is duly noted):
Here is a discussion of one of its “courses”.

Prager on gays,
Muslims, Judaism and women

Among Prager’s other main obsessions are, well, here is
himself: “America is engaged in two wars for the survival of its civilization.
The war over same-sex marriage and the war against Islamic totalitarianism are
actually two fronts in the same war – a war for the preservation of the unique
American creation known as Judeo-Christian civilization. One enemy is religious
extremism. The other is secular extremism. One enemy is led from abroad. The
other is directed from home.”

When Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison was elected Prager argued
that Ellison should not be allowed to take the oath on the Koran but instead
the Bible since allowing Ellison to use the Koran would be more devastating to American values than 9-11 (despite the fact that no member of Congress is officially sworn in with a
Bible – only in private ceremonies held after the official ceremony can religious
texts be used – but for Prager the Constiutional idea that no religious test
should be required to enter office is apparently irrelevant since the
Constitution is apparently anti-American). The fact that some Jewish office holders,
for instance, have been sworn in on the Tanakh was irrelevant to Prager since
any Jews who used the Tanakh were “secularists who didn’t believe what was in
it anyway.” Accoring to Prager, he has subsequently been persecuted by the
Media through baseless accusations of islamophobia.

With regard to zeh gays (and he really doesn’t understand the notion of sexual orientation)
he has tried to argue that the legalization of gay marriage is a greater threat
to America than economic depression, partially because legalizing gay marriage
will redefine the concept of gender
itself (here is Prager on the 2008 California ruling). In his essay “Judaism’s Sexual
Revolution: Why Judaism rejected Homosexuality” he put it this way:

“Judaism cannot make
peace with homosexuality because homosexuality denies many of Judaism's most
fundamental principles. It denies life, it denies God's expressed desire that
men and women cohabit, and it denies the root structure that Judaism wishes for
all mankind, the family […] But the major reason for anyone concerned with
women's equality to be concerned with homosexuality is the direct correlation
between the prevalence of male homosexuality and the relegation of women to a
low social role. The improvement of the condition of women has only occurred in
Western civilization, the civilization least tolerant of homosexuality [as
proven, one must assume, by the gender equality in anti-gay countries such as
Iran and Afghanistan] […] While the typical lesbian has had fewer than ten
‘lovers,’ the typical male homosexual in America has had over 500 [no citation].”

According to Prager and his fans, Prager has, after writing
the essay (which is still used by openly homophobic sites such as the Catholic
Education Resource Center), been persecuted by gay activists through
disagreement and criticism.

Some of that criticism is surely directed at Prager’s conviction
that marriage equality will lead to the legalization of polygamy and incest and
that tolerance of the LGBT community will lead to “fascism in America,” as well
as for his comparison of the 2013 Supreme Court marriage equality ruling on
Proposition 8 to the Egyptian military coup of the country’s elected
government. According to Prager,
civil society will erode if we fail to enforce a strict definition of marriage
as between one man and one woman.

Prager’s views on traditional marriage are themselves worth
a comment. Prager has argued that wives “ought to consent to at least some form
of sexual relations as much as possible,” regardless of their “mood”.
Indeed, among Prager’s celebrated contributions to civilization is his novel view on rape (also here), and his take on the Sandusky affair. He has also claimed that liberal teachers and CBS news are responsible for
‘indoctrinating’ young girls with feminism and hence making them oversensitive
to men’s advances which in turn is the reason why higher levels of sexual
harassment were being reported by young girls. Women is also one of the greatest threats to science,
which is a strange accusation given how little time and sympathy Prager has for
science.

Indeed, as a result of feminism, women squander the “decade
or more during which [they] have the best chance to attract men” by being “preoccupied
with developing a career.” But according to Prager women are “not programmed”
to prefer a career over a husband and family, and “most women without a man do
worse in life than fish without bicycles.” So there.

Miscellaneous

As a staunch global warming denialist,
Prager has argued that the fact that “leftists” believe in global warming shows how
illogical they are.

Diagnosis: Yet another raving denialist moron. Prager does
apparently enjoy quite a number of fans who seems to view him as an important
intellectual, which, given Prager's actual levels of intellect, is rather telling.